Wonkette

David Brooks was right: Red and blue America are different. In blue America, if you buck your party on the Iraq War, you get challenged by a nondescript-looking anti-war liberal. In red America, the gauntlet gets tossed down by a guy who looks like a cross between Sam Brownback and that doctor in the Spider-Man movies who eventually turns into the the Lizard.

Attorney General Jon Bruning has changed his mind. He now is considering challenging fellow Republican Chuck Hagel in Nebraska’s U.S. Senate primary next year.
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Hagel helped Senate Democrats approve a $123 billion spending bill that includes a call for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing this year, with a goal of ending combat operations by March 31, 2008. MORE »

John McCain’s YouTube channel is streaming a pre-pre-preview of his official campaign announcement, featuring exciting video of those increasingly-rare moments when his blood is actually flowing to all of his body parts. Unfortunately, no one in the McCain mothership noticed that YouTube’s video previews capture the midpoint of the clips and turn them into static screenshots. Hence this deflated-sounding promise of sauce, beans and meat products for anyone who sidles up to the Straight Talk Express.
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(Explanation for that photo: Here.)

As of this moment I am an ex-Wonkette guest blogger. Phew. Between the 12 posts per day, the flood of e-mail tips, the Tammy Bruce interview, and the manatee-paced blog software, I ran myself ragged this week. I have a few people to thank for that.

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After a week of guest-blogging, I know understand why Wonkette spends so much time clawing at Katherine Harris: We have to do 12 posts a day, and she’s good for three to four. Before noon. Ignoring her would be like turning down manna on the road to the promised land.

Speaking of insane similies!

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris’ campaign has called for an apology from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.
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“Thank God for Bill Nelson, because we’d have another crook in the United States Senate if weren’t for him,” Dean said. “He’s going to beat the pants off Katherine Harris, who didn’t understand that it is ethically improper to be the chairman of the campaign and count the votes at the same time. This is not Russia. And she is not Stalin.”

It’s pretty clear that Dean is evoking that (possibly fictitious) Stalin knee-slapper, “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” Who cares! Someone’s stepped into a controversy and it’s not Katherine Harris!

That said… could Dean be outsmarting the GOP? (For once?)

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You’re going to get it e-mailed to you eventually, so just bite the bullet and watch Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton on the Colbert Report. Be proud: She gives as good as she gets and gets into the flow of even Colbert’s most caustic jokes. MORE »

There’s been the right amount of fuss about Bleu Copas, the Arabic translator who was outed by anonymous e-mails and then dismissed from the U.S. Army under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But there hasn’t been enough attention paid to this side note:

On Dec. 2, investigators formally interviewed Copas and asked if he understood the military’s policy on homosexuals, if he had any close acquaintances who were gay, and if he was involved in community theater.

Question: What if he had been involved in a production of “HMS Pinafore”? Actually, no, that’s not a very good question. MORE »

For some reason, polls by Rasmussen Reports always give Bush a higher approval rating than other leading polls - Gallup, Harris, Fox News. That’s probably the Reason “The Beltway Boys” co-host and journeyman pundit Fred Barnes cites them whenever he wants to re-make the case that Bush is a history-shiftin’ rebel who will lead us joyfully into the Rapture. From last Saturday’s episode of “The Beltway Boys”:

BARNES: Mort, have you been watching Bush’s presidential approval rating not surge, but creep up? MORE »

[UPDATE: Jesus, this post. A warning to everyone who wants to tip Wonkette - don't send a tip if you're not willing to see it printed. If it's printed, lay off the multiple emails demanding retraction.] A well-connected reader passes this on: The search criteria reseachers use inside one of the party committees. These are some of the terms the vetters punch into various data banks when checking out whether the party can accept a donation from a donor - to make sure, for example, that the would be-benefactor isn’t some kind of uppity queer. MORE »

A reader emails:

Isn’t that Katherine Harris carefully positioned right behind the president at the Voting Rights event yesterday?

Why, yes, it is. As the White House’s own video shows, Katherine Harris was standing right behind President Bush as he celebrated the re-upping of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Black political enfranchisement, Katherine Harris - they go together like ecstasy and glow sticks. MORE »

Who knew porn star and Nevada gubernatorial candidate Melody Damayo would take her Wonkette endorsement so seriously? It’s listed prominently in her profile at the Reno Gazette-Journal. In fact, out of all her endorsements, it’s the only-est one.

The whole profile is worth reading, especially because the fast-paced career of a porn star (”became magazine publisher at young age of 19″) makes your average billionaire or son-of-someone-famous or Georgetown Law grad candidate look like a total loser. MORE »

Has Montana’s Conrad Burns (a.k.a. America’s least popular senator) forgotten the lesson of 9/11? Namely, that you never dump on firefighters? The Associated Press has a report of Burns’ conversation with a Virginia firefighting team that helped estinguish a disaster in Burns’ state.

“The toughest part of the conversation was the point where the senator was critical of a firefighter sitting across from us in the gate area,” Rosenthal’s report reads. “I offered to the senator that our firefighters make around $8 to $12 an hour and time-and-a-half for overtime. He seemed a bit surprised that it wasn’t higher.” MORE »

Given the amount of e-mail we get asking when Ana Marie Cox will “come back to save Wonkette,” we’ve gathered that feelings about this blog’s founding editor run strong. Many of the comments about her new job at Time.com were positive. Several were not. In the spirit of rewarding bad behavior, here’s the best of those. MORE »

In case you missed the earlier warning invitation, a reminder: Reason magazine is having a happy hour at the 18th Street Lounge (1212 18th Street NW) tonight, starting at 6:30. The bar is near the intersection of Jefferson, 18th, and Connecticut, and it’s a little tough to see from the street - look for an unmarked door next to a mattress store and walk up. Special guests include most of the mag’s staff, ABC News’ Jake Tapper, and the DC Examiner’s and FishBowl DC’s Patrick Gavin. MORE »

Sadly, we’re not done with Ann Coulter. Happily, we have worthwhile gossip to spread. In honor of this day I offer: The Ana Marie Cox Memorial Anonymous Sex Rumor.

Tammy Bruce — conservative writer, former president of NOW in Los Angeles, former KFI-AM radio talk show host — is said to be a lover of Ann Coulter. Bruce has always disclosed on her radio show that she is a full-on lesbian. It’s said that Coulter and Bruce were seen at a women’s bar on “little Santa Monica Blvd” called Palms just west of La Cienega in West Hollywood. MORE »